10 Moments That Literally Stopped Horror Movies

We would simply be remiss not to include Funny Games in this list. Even if, in some ways, it’s a bit overdone it would be ridiculous to not acknowledge its masterful breaking of the fourth wall. Director Michael Haneke knew exactly what he was doing with this, and he uses his brief pauses in continuity to force the audience to confront their own morality.

On a few occasions throughout the film, one of our two villains turns his gaze outward - either literally looking down the camera at the audience or by reaching into the film’s timeline to rework the events. The story concerns two strangers invading a wealthy family’s home, imprisoning and torturing them.

At one point, they prompt the mother in the family to search for the family dog - whom he knows is already dead. As he teases her, turning her search into a game, he turns to the camera and winks at the audience, stopping the film’s continuity as we know it in its tracks.

Later the mother manages to grab hold of a shotgun and kill one of the two intruders, in response to which the surviving one simply grabs a remote control and rewinds the film to before the shooting happened. He prevents the kill from happening, changing the course of events and bringing that previous timeline to a full stop.

It’s a masterful, unique demonstration of meta film-making, and one that deserves to have been talked half to death the way it has been!